Ascension
by firstForward
Summary: Dark Marik is attempting to escape the Shadow Realm, and Miho gets caught up in the sorcery she thought she wanted, but soon realizes is far more dangerous than she's ready for.


Ascension

The smell was unlike anything he had ever known before. It was thick, and bloody; but diluted through the smoke of the Shadow-air as if the blackness were a poor filter, straining the smell and adding its own intoxicating magic-endued scent to it. Marik crawled, as best he could, along the grey-black 'ground' as he watched for the steadily dripping _downward_ liquid, still leaking from the spirit beast. It was difficult going, at best, as insistent as the Realm was at keeping him in the deeper levels, but Marik was energized with the recent spirits he had consumed, and he managed to keep going.

Cries and moans echoed all around him, though there was no true space to echo _in_, exactly. He tried to block out the sounds as best he could, because as distracting as it was it was also silencing the movements of the wounded spirit just ahead. And he needed to devour more. More. As much as he could. All for his goal. He _would_ be rid of the chains of the blackness of the Realm. He had strength enough, for that task yet.

The creature shifted through another veil; another boundary. Marik felt the vibrations of the borderline, heavy and deadly. They pounded through his skull, and he had to pause to catch his breath, clutching at the Shadows below him, barely on his knees as it was. Then he reached forward, muscles shuddering, and grasped the veil, pulling himself through with a wretched cry. Connective tissue tore, and pain lanced through him, and _damn that barrier was thick_, but Marik pulled and pulled and finally was through.

His breath sucked in and pushed out with unsteady lung contractions, and Marik felt his vision blur, felt the consumed partial souls writhe inside him. His blood bubbled as his body fought the pull of the Shadows, and he urged it to absorb the spirits inside him into nothingness.

There, up ahead: the wounded spirit, gasping as hard as him, though he was not bleeding. It looked at him with watering fish eyes, as if to say _I want to live more than you do_.

Marik ignored the urge to sink back through the barrier just behind him, the urge to sink into the deeper level that had been slowing eating away at his mind. He looked back at the creature and hissed out, "You're mine." And he continued crawling, one painful inch at a time, though there was no measure of distance in the Shadow Realm, and he could not have said whether he had moved inches or kilometres. The thing, the spirit he had been hunting, whined pathetically and wobbled to the right or left —Marik didn't know— but did not manage to get anywhere.

Then they were touching, and Marik dug his raw fingernails into the form of the creature, and sucked once more with his tender lungs. One long intake of spirit-flesh. Slowly it slid into his mouth, and down his throat; crying, crying. Slimy spirit-skin and bloody organs, all knotting in his mouth before he forced it down with a hard swallow.

His violet sorcerer's aura dimmed briefly before glowing brighter, and Marik felt his muscles relax at the influx of energy. The hold the veil had on him lessened, slightly. Marik leaned back on his calves, licking dry lips. He'd made it through another level. Another success. It'd been slow going —really, who knew how much time had passed in the Light Realm— but he was one level higher in the Shadow Realm, and soon he would be completely free.

Now that he was temporarily satisfied, he took a moment to look around, wondering at the cloudiness of this level as compared to the deeper levels. It was not as pitch black, and the quietness of the screams around him confused him somewhat. After a moment of consideration he realized it might be because the occupants of this level were not as mind-crushed as the occupants of other levels. Did they still have some measure of sanity, perhaps? Marik listened and blinked through purple-black mists, searching for the condemned souls of the victims of countless duelists and sorcerers. And he began to pick them out, and saw that they were curiously more humanoid than the lower level spirits. Ghosts and ghouls, crawling along dead Shadow-ground with no more purpose than a bee without a hive.

But there was a new creature in their midst, though they did not know it yet. Marik, filled with his recent meal of the spirit creature, who had come from much deeper levels of the Realm. He knew how to stay alive, far more than the spirits around him, and was unlike many residents of the Realm in that he himself had been a duelist and sorcerer once. He was determined to climb higher through the levels, each housing progressively less evil spirits, before exiting completely. It could be done. He was sure of it.

The Ring spirit had once mockingly told him that he'd survived the Shadows.

And Marik was so much stronger than him.

Picking out a new victim, Marik began crawling once more.

* * *

><p>They were slipping away.<p>

Shoulders brushing, Tristan walked while slightly hunched over to hear the lowered voice of Yuugi beside him, and the serious looks on their faces suggested the careful whispers weren't some secret joke or mentions of a crush being relayed between them. Miho, hands curled around her designer purse which she had been pausing to admire occasionally, struggled to understand what could be going on that had all her friends whispering to each other and keeping their whispers directed away from her. Behind her, Joey murmured plans to Téa to see his sister later, and Téa agreed to join him. Miho pressed her lips into a frown. They were even making plans without her now.

Chilled air, smoky from car fumes, clouded around her head and made her exhales visible. Miho thought she heard her name spoken between the ratchet noises of a passing vehicle's engine. She let out a huff. "This is where I catch the bus. See you all later," she said loudly, to break up their conversation.

There was a chorus of good-byes, and Miho crossed the street to sit on a bench.

Téa and Joey immediately walked closer to where Yuugi and Tristan had paused in mid-step, and Téa asked, "Has anyone gotten a hold of Duke?"

"No," Yuugi responded, "but the fact that he hasn't contacted us suggests that he hasn't had any problems lately, right?"

"He could just be hiding it, saving face in case none of us are going through it," Téa pointed out.

Yuugi scrunched his eyebrows. "I suppose I'll go see him then. And someone's got to phone Kaiba..."

"If you think you have to contact every person who was on the blimp, you're going to have a hard time finding out about the Ishtars," Joey broke in.

"Yeah..."

"And that still doesn't explain me. I haven't been hearing any strange voices at all. No dream Marik haunting me in my sleep either. If he's trying to lure someone into freeing him, he's doing a poor job by just going after you three."

Shaking his head, Yuugi speculated, "I don't think he's choosing people specifically. I think he might just be reaching through the bonds his mind made with people over the years, trying to find a mind pliable enough to do his bidding. He might not even know what minds he's contacting. I mean, he's been banished for a while now. Maybe rationality and logic have left him in some ways?"

"I never thought about that." Joey admitted.

"Either way, until we find some way to block out his...mental...probing, I think we need to be a little more careful. Stick together, and support each other. We have to remind ourselves we're not crazy from hearing voices in our head."

"...Right," muttered Tristan, "tell that to that voices, would you."

* * *

><p>Miho was trying to locate a phone. Unfortunately, there were only houses around, and she simply didn't feel comfortable walking up to a door and asking to use a phone. She frowned uselessly at the bus driver of the bus she had not wanted to get on, who was apologizing to other riders that her own bus was late. Did she really want to ride half way around the city, just to get to her destination much later, or the alternative, to wait for her bus which would be who knew how long? Miho starting walking back down the street. She was vaguely sure that Bakura's apartment complex was a few blocks away, and asking him to borrow his phone did not seem like a bad idea at all. And if she just so happened to locate a payphone while she was walking, then great. And if not —Bakura would be generous, and perhaps let her stay long enough for tea. And then they could get to know each other better, which she had been aiming for, for quite some time now but had somehow never gotten around to.<p>

Some twenty minutes later, Miho walked up to the apartment door she really should not have known the number of —not that she'd been asking about him since he'd arrived in their school, or anything— and knocked politely. Several times. The door opened hesitantly, and there stood the white-haired teen in a zip-up dark blue sweater, looking bewildered. Miho stopped observing what he was wearing just look enough to smile brightly. "Hello! I need to use your phone."

"Oh," Bakura did not so much step aside as Miho did step around him, poking her head around the corner to glance into the tidied living room area. He cleared his throat. "Um, welcome. I mean, you're welcome to."

"Great!" She kicked off her shoes and dropped her bag, wandering into the living room. Bakura followed with a gesture to the phone sitting blatantly on the small coffee table. Miho did not seem inclined to head over to it. Instead she sat down on the couch expectantly, prompting Bakura to blink.

"Erm...I'll get you a drink then, shall I?"

Miho nodded with some enthusiasm, and Bakura left the room.

What she'd pictured in her head seemed to be a little glorified, now that she thought about it. Bakura turned out to have a more simplistic home, furnished according to function rather than decoration. There was empty space before the kitchen, as if it had once housed something like a dining table that had been recently removed. Miho nodded to herself. He had probably gotten rid of it after deciding it was pointless since he lived alone. He also didn't seem to have a lot of photos on his wall. The chance to view amusing and adorable younger versions of himself was suddenly absent, and that left Miho looking for other sources of entertainment. She glanced down the short hallway that led to the bathroom, eyeing the closets lining the hall.

There was something black, leaking out from under one closet door. Oil paint? Miho had heard that he was a bit of an artist. She left her seat for the hall, making for the closet.

The door...

Something glimmered over it. Miho stopped in mid-movement, her hand poised to pull open the closet, noticing something strange about the paint on the door. It seemed like someone had taken a pin and had delicately scratched a design into the wood, swirls and lines all intersecting and coated in something that made it shimmer. The design was almost indistinguishable from the paint, but Miho had an eye for glitter, and this door certainly glittered. Now that she looked closer, it seemed like she might dislodge some of the glitter if she pulled open the closet. It would fall from the cracks in the wood and litter the floor. Well, Bakura's floor was a mess from the oil paint anyway. He'd thank her, for having noticed the problem. Miho pulled the handle.

A cloud of dust and glitter and stale air released from inside, and black paint suddenly gushed around her feet. Miho cried out sadly. Her socks were _ruined_. Prying them off with one hand, she waved her other hand before her face, and took a look inside.

Inside Bakura's closet, Miho found quite interestingly, were boxes upon boxes of unopened postal deliveries from countries around the globe. They all sat loaded with tape and staples, seemingly worried for by their sender, covered in stamps with names of places Miho didn't even recognize. She stared, and stared until her eyes caught the one thing in the closet not contained in boxes, which was a little shelf of books right inside the door. Journals? Art books? She grabbed at one eagerly.

"What are you doing?" Said a voice in alarm.

Miho didn't even glance up. "There was black paint leaking out from under your door. I found it for you. You're welcome."

There was a note of silence before Bakura reached out hastily and grabbed the book from her hands before she could open the cover. "I had a seal on the door," Bakura complained, before widening his eyes and hastily correcting himself, "I mean, I'm sort of superstitious. Um. Come away from here, please? I got your drink." Superstitious, Miho thought, filing the word away in the collection of thoughts about him.

"Is that why you haven't opened any of the boxes?" Miho pressed, following him back to the living room.

"Yes." Bakura responded awkwardly.

"Who are they from?" Miho sat down and took the glass on the table before her. Her ruined socks were scrunched in her other hand, carefully held so as not to drip the black on the floor. Bakura just stood hovering over her, book still in his hands.

"My father. Don't you need to call someone?"

"A taxi. My bus didn't arrive on time." She sighed dramatically, and then took a long drink. Bakura fidgeted. "I've never gotten that many presents from my parents before."

Caught between not wanting to be rude and not wanting to say anything else, Bakura returned carefully, "I didn't get them all at once. They've been sent, one at a time, over the years. I...got one bad present one year and I haven't opened any since." He really wished she'd change the subject, and to his bad luck she did, but chose a topic even more uncomfortable than the last.

"Are those sketchbooks in there?" Miho asked with much curiosity.

Bakura doubted that he could say both that they were and that she couldn't see them, judging by the very intent interest on her face. He wasn't sure he could politely refuse her without upsetting her feelings. But at least Miho had some idea, knew something of him, or he would not have felt even slightly comfortable saying what he did. "They're...not. They're for...for sorcery."

The regret for saying that was almost immediate, because Miho's intent interest was replaced by a sour, irritated face. "That's why you don't want to talk to me, huh? Because I'm not like you or the others." It would have been hard, spending time with their group, going through the school years, and not learning something of what they'd gone through, but what she knew was very little, and as far as Miho was concerned it was more of a club that everyone else seemed to be in but her than anything real and serious. With the seclusion she'd been in recently in her mind, Miho put the glass down and reached for the phone.

"Oh no," Bakura said, feeling sorry, "I didn't mean it like that."

For a moment, he considered letting her have the book, if only to reassure her in some way that she could be let in on things like that. But as he stood there in the living room with the dark, very dangerous book in his hands, he wasn't sure that was a good idea at all. It would be a better idea to offer her dessert for making her sad. Miho was listening for the dial tone from the speaker. Clearing his throat uncomfortably, he left to go find her something in his fridge, unsure of what else he could say. From the kitchen, he heard her say shortly, "Hello, can I get a taxi at..."

Once the taxi had been called for, Miho looked to the kitchen and found with some disappointment that Bakura seemed to be avoiding her until she left. Well, fine, she could accept that. Huffing a bit, she got to her feet and started for her shoes and bag at the door. But her attention wandered to the still-open closet, with the little shelf of sorcery books just lying there amongst unopened gifts. She hesitated a breath, ears listening for sounds from the kitchen, and then all at once she was dashing for the shelf, fingers snatching a thin notebook —he probably wouldn't even miss it. Her feet dug into her shoes impatiently, and then with bag clasped under her arm she was outside.

She closed his apartment door with a quiet click, and headed home.

"Miho? I brought you some pastries to take with—" Bakura stopped abruptly, staring at the empty couch, at the missing shoes and bag from the entrance. He sighed a little. If only he could've handled that better. But it seemed as if that, even without a spirit working against him, he still had trouble being social.

Bakura ate a pastry from the tin in his hands, and sat on the empty couch once occupied by Miho, if only because he had nothing better to do.

* * *

><p>The thin notebook, Miho had discovered within hours of bringing it home, was at least one of the sources of the black paint that had been left on Bakura's floor. It slid out from the pages onto her bedspread, and this had her incredibly curious, for didn't artists usually let their work dry before closing the covers of their sketchbooks and setting them on shelves? Thankfully a quick grab for a towel cleaned the mess up, although she'd probably need to find some stain remover for the sheets later.<p>

Miho sat on the bed and tugged open the cover, and out spilled the loose-leaf sheets, all ripped from the spine like they hadn't been able to bear being contained in the notebook. Black ink in Ryou's steady style formed the picture of a human ribcage, carefully etched on the white space like every little nick was vital to jot down. Some edges were smeared. Miho's face, once filled with an eagerness of learning and an interest in the unknown, began to tilt in the direction of the uncertainty of what she'd just opened. This page she fiddled with the edge of before turning over, and there the words struck her: '_possession of some form of remains is required_' and she began to get uneasy.

Three more pages she looked at; three pages of sketches of what looked like circle designs, layers and layers of circles with crisscrossing and intersecting swirls. Little doodles of the various stages of a human corpse in decomposition, in the corners. Miho snapped the book shut, sick.

This hadn't been what she'd wanted to see. She'd had this urge to throw herself into the world of her friends; the one that contained all the adventures and let her in closer to what seemed like was becoming an untouchable bond. She'd wanted to learn from their books, then nod sagely when they mentioned something because she'd know what they were talking about. No one was letting her in on their secrets, so why couldn't she just let herself in? Surely there was nothing wrong with it, but —this book was so much creepier than what she'd expected. She'd been hoping for notes on how to turn someone's tongue purple with a snap of her fingers, or how to make her pen write her homework for her when her fingers got too tired. The sort of stuff teenagers should be interested in. Silly things. And spells to make school easier, of course.

As she sat there with the book that really wasn't what she wanted anymore, the knot of sickness grew a little, and Miho pegged it as guilt. She heaved a sigh and thrust the notebook into her purse, and grabbed her house key, before heading outside once more. The taxi had gone to waste.

It took her nearly an hour, after stopping briefly at a pastry shop —she might've baked the apology herself, but Miho couldn't cook, normally it was the guys who gave _her_ things, not the other way around— to get her standing with an exasperated look on her face outside his apartment. After three knocks she was thoroughly frustrated, and pulled a bit on the handle, surprised when the door opened. He must not have locked up after she left.

"Bakura? I grabbed something when I left but I brought it back, okay? And I have cream puffs."

Miho set the things along with her bag on the floor, because she was tired of carrying them and if he wasn't going to take them from her hands then he could grab them from the floor. Huffing out, she kicked off her shoes and turned the corner to his living room, stopping completely still.

* * *

><p>In the Shadow Realm, a feasting sorcerer-turned-spirit paused from his latest meal, and felt for the bond in his mind which had suddenly become incredibly pliable.<p>

The world _beneath_ him bent.

Souls around him, crawling —all crawling, no, there were no victims in this Realm who had strength enough to stand, indeed— began picking up their pace, flailing from the bucking waves of the fabric of the Realm. Marik stared, frozen, save for the movement of the Realm itself, and willed himself to know the reason for it. He had mind enough to understand the workings of the place he was in, surely!

There along his bond, in the mind so familiar and yet so strange to him, there was placed very deliberate thoughts of pain and anxiety and need and sadness. Marik tried to reach out and bend the will to him: _free me free me free me_.

But the mind had focussed its attention elsewhere, and Marik was left alone to save himself.

He could only observe the happenings of everything all around him, and at once he came to a decision, and began working his way towards the closest spirit-being. The thing screeched as he came near, and Marik tore off fragile globular like appendages as he neared, stuffing them in his mouth as he continued past the now profusely bleeding creature. Others turned and saw him, and cried out, scrambling away, but Marik let them go, for he was headed for an easy passage that was not worth devoting himself to consumption.

Down, down, the currents of blackness and purple-torn clouds swept him, and Marik saw the barrier before him approaching with ever increasing quickness. He let himself fall.

The source of the waves could only be down, deep in the other levels. This would be an easy journey, as hard as the Realm worked at pulling creatures down, and so it would pull him.

That he knew what to expect did not stop him from cringing at the approaching barrier, and he broke through it with a startled snarl.

Something was tearing the Realm apart, Marik thought as he stared through the blurry haze falling above him. Threads of fabric were loosening in this level, widening space and creating a drop zone of empty darkness, with no false ground or walls to snatch to slow Marik down. He looked on in horror and awe as the next barrier came before him, completely unable to stop his descent, and creatures wailed around him from unsteady ledges of clouds and gutted corpses. His cry echoed theirs as he tore through the next barrier.

This level was worse off than the last, and Marik almost felt the contents of his stomach rebel and disassociate with the magic in his system still trying to absorb it into his aura. Swarms of sludge and insectan spirits, all forming a sort of indistinguishable blob rolling with the waves of unthreading fabric, were attempting to scratch and chew and dissolve their way through the purple clouds present in the Realm. This sort of mad desire to get out was nothing new to Marik, but the mob mentality was, as likely as it was for him to be attacked or to wish to attack anytime he met another thing in the blackness. He couldn't tell much as he fell, but it didn't even seem as if many were being eaten inside the mass, or it wouldn't be as large as it was.

What made his mind take pause as he fell, was the rather odd thought that the mass seemed to be, if not eating itself, then imploding on itself. It was pulled inward through clouds and Shadow-fabric, and Marik at once thought: this is my stop.

He moved his whole body, reaching outward for any kind of handhold, and found nothing that could stop his descent, and there beneath him was the heavy, thick wall of darkness that existed as another barrier. Any further down, and he might start getting into sorcerer territory: the kind of evil places he would have drawn power from to assist in his Shadow Duels, the kind of places sorcerers transported their deadly games for the ultimate showdown. Marik wasn't interested in partaking in the kind of bloodshed that would be going on down there, with all the chaos that was going on. He had goals, and wouldn't be stalled. It was likely he needed to move quickly, because as strange as the happenings were, the Realm was indestructible and would soon right itself. Of that he had no doubt.

Now was the moment, it seemed, that he had to use the strength of the souls and spirits he'd absorbed. Marik flexed his fingers, breathing more excitedly. He couldn't remember the last time he'd attempted any magic, with no true body and true aura to draw from. He wondered if it'd even work, for as energized as he was not even the Shadows around him had heeded his call for any type of spell since he had entered the place. Marik reached inward, calling on the strength he had been building into his aura, and felt the muddled beginnings of an expansion of energy. Not quick enough. The barrier was too close. Gritting his teeth in annoyance, he tried again, more forcibly this time.

His aura widened to find places for him to grab at, lighting the area in a brighter violet that captured the notice of the nearest of the swarm. The mass began to break away, making for him or for another place he did not know. Marik felt a partial soul under his skin gnaw at something he'd long ago lost all feeling to, then watched as a grimy paw, growing larger and stretching thin, clawed at the wall. His descent towards the barrier began to slow. Another appendage joined in, something else inhuman, digging into the wall hard. Finally there was a jerk, and Marik was dangling with a smug look on his face with two hands and two non-hands finding purchase in what could have been a sheer rock wall for all its stiffness.

Quickly he climbed up, and saw the swarm above and around him, which he kept distant from his form by batting with the long appendages now hanging from himself like a party trick gone wrong. Marik started for the mass, half-limping, half-crawling, ever pulled backward by the strong force of the Realm which wished him downward.

The swarm, as mutated and mindless as it was, still shied away from this new strange creature in its midst, long wails cascading from all around him. Marik decided it was due to the energy he exuded, and took advantage of it, howling back at the nearest of the mass and plunging himself into the middle of it.

There, there in the centre of the roiling storm of movement, Marik could at last feel the full extent of what was happening to the Realm. He pushed forward, excited, clawing away at everything around him, not even feeling the mass of things pressed against him so densely he could barely breathe. For behind that mass, there was the falling apart of all things; the hole in the fabric of reality he had been imprisoned in for so long.

Something, or someone, was pulling apart the Realm.

Marik, strong with will and need to escape, at last broke through the mass, clumps of dead dropping from his shoulders. And he saw...there were no other words to say, for a creature trapped in Shadows: light.

He used his appendages as leverage, and though his legs shook hard he abandoned all desire to conserve energy. No clouds lay strewn around him, but in this new place, this hole between levels, Marik could see other creatures dropping like flies from their own levels. They hissed and sputtered and were quickly gobbled up by the stronger who had gotten through, and Marik took advantage of the feeding frenzy to make his way to the vortex of space that was free of all blackness.

There was, walking with choking lungs through the vortex from another entrance, a new victim, and Marik thought he'd known him from somewhere before. Thumping and stumbling along, Marik at last reached where the man stood, and was momentarily stunned.

Bakura, exhausted with the energy he'd spent getting into the vortex, turned slowly and warily to the source of the sound.

"Ring spirit," breathed Marik.

Bakura choked on his air.

Marik slammed his elbow into his skull, and was satisfied with the crack he heard. The man dropped to the floor. "Got thrown in the Realm again, did you? Is that why it's going crazy? Then in the direction you entered—!" Turning to face the side passage curling off into empty space, Marik stepped over Bakura's body, a hundred times more excited than before.

Someone was blocking his path. "A-a-a monster!" She shrieked in horror.

Upon seeing the space that had probably once housed Bakura's dining room table filled with candles and bowls of plant parts and odd painted markings on the floor, along with the black hole that presided in the middle of the space, Miho had dashed over just in time to see Bakura disappearing into blackness. Terrified and confused and angry —yet again, more things no one ever saw fit to inform her of— she'd rushed in after him, because for once in her life she wouldn't stand by and not be a part of their magic thing they always went on about. But it had been _difficult_. The air inside was thick, so thick it didn't seem like it was letting her lungs have any space for exhaling at all. And it was cold, like deathly cold —the kind of cold that existed in crypts and smelled like them, too. The loss of sight had been even more disturbing: with nothing around her but blackness, Miho had had to rely on just going forward, which wasn't much at all. But Bakura was somewhere ahead, and as she'd walked, coughing, the world around her grew steadily more visible into something of a spiral hallway. Which was comforting, in a sense.

Bakura had paused far up ahead, she'd seen, and she'd cried out for him, but there were distant noises of so many things that it had been hard for him to hear. And then had come the creature from around the corner, which had promptly attacked him.

She didn't know why she'd thought it'd been a good idea to shriek at it, but now that she had, her hand quickly went to clamp around her mouth.

Marik only laughed. It'd been awhile since he'd been called names of any sort, and for some reason he'd enjoyed it. "I'm no monster," he said mockingly, "I'm Marik. The side Pharaoh sent into the Shadows," he said gleefully, because now that he had an exit saying he'd been sent there was as good as saying it was a part of his past.

"Get a-away from B-Bakura!" She yelled, skirting around the edge of the tunnel, hands not moving from her face for fear of needing to ward off an attack.

"You'll make," he said delightedly, "a decent last meal before my entry into the Light Realm..." and took appendage-assisted steps towards her.

Miho reached down, slinging Bakura's arm around her shoulder, and stumbled backward, trying to lose herself in the blackness. She hoped it would be dark enough for the creature not to see either, and all the while she shook Bakura hard, begging him silently to awaken. The thing hissed and sputtered after her, violet cloud around it lengthening to brighten the area. More appendages appeared to reach outward, clawed and finned and tentacle-like things that had her dizzy with anxiety. But it seemed as if it could not walk properly, and for that she was grateful.

"Oh, leave the Ring spirit behind, where's the fun in having slow prey?" Marik shouted after her, and his insides gurgled at the spirits all desperately eating him out from the inside, attempting to escape his clutches. Marik settled into a loping half-crawl, hands finding little support from the misty walls.

But there was darkness ahead, and light even further beyond, and he felt strengthened in his belief that he would soon be free.

"Bakura, Bakura, wake up you're the sorcerer guy not me," Miho cried and coughed into his ear. She didn't know when she'd started crying but it was certainly not one of her brighter ideas because now she was losing more air with each intake for a sob.

"Come back, the death won't even be slow, I guarantee," Marik gasped out, now fully losing control of the spirits inside him. His aura was clouded and wildly expanding and contracting, and the appendages all wrenching themselves out of his skin just kept multiplying and multiplying and he didn't know how to stop it.

Miho looked back, once, hearing the monster's cries, and saw with horror the thing that looked part every animal in existence, mutated and deformed beyond any recognition. It keened horribly, and Miho cried, exhausted and still coughing and only barely holding up Bakura's weight.

She felt a little better when she realized it had fallen and could not get up, and then as she continued to stare it occurred to her that it was dying.

The numerous limbs it had all seemed to be fighting for control, attacking each other, and peeling off the skin of the creature below them. Tearing, tearing. Bones snapped and shattered. Moaning mouths and eyes and backs all tore free, crawling out of the form, and Miho stood still in terror. But she needn't have worried at all, for they all collapsed as soon as they left the body below them, and she could see the gory sight of them killing each other and dying. Blood seeped downward.

It was an odd smell, she thought, still frozen and sobbing and terrified. It was like blood, but diluted, and endued with some other scents. She was nearly sick from it.

The thing was still alive. Gasping, growling, but alive.

Miho stared at it and it stared back.

"Were you ever human once?" She thought aloud in horror.

Marik whispered, "You didn't know I was?" In equal horror and shock.

But all Miho heard was a hiss and a sputter.

Marik died.

Numb, Miho dragged Bakura down the vortex, and finally saw the tiny dining space with the ritualistic objects still strewn all over. She stepped out of the vortex with him, and it closed up behind them with no more than a breeze in passing.

Miho could only sink to her knees and stare at Bakura, still unconscious, in her arms.

In the circle of candles now unlit, there lay the open book she had pulled out of his closet earlier that afternoon, with a photograph of a little girl and the word 'Amane' inscribed on an open page. Miho read a few lines down, feeling her face dry up of tears a little.

'An attempt at necromancy.

For my sister.

The following is required...'

"You're stupid," Miho muttered to unconscious Bakura, dully. She sniffed. "Magic is stupid. I don't want it anymore. I'll be glad to be the only one who doesn't know much in our group, okay?"

Bakura, of course, didn't answer.

She felt at last uncomfortable, and pulled herself and him over to the couches, where they rested for a long, much needed sleep.

(end)


End file.
